French Frdays with Dorie

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Gingered Carrot Cookies

Whipped these cookies up after I got home from work today. What an easy recipe to pull together. I agree with Paula, these are nothing like mini-carrot cakes. They are delicious but very different from a carrot cake.

I would not have said they were especially scone-like, but I can't come up with an alternative suggestion, either. I think they are far lighter in texture than the average scone - even my home made scones tend to be a bit drier than these are. I do love scones and make them often. I think my best description would be a cross between the texture of a scone and cake - a cake with the texture say of pound cake.

I quite like the taste - not exactly savory - but definitely not overly sweet. I prefer rich desserts to sweet ones, so that totally works for me. I got 36 cookies - I could have easily made them smaller and gotten closer to 60, but they are not gigantors - just a good size. Also I found them to be exactly as trustworthy as Dorie said - no massive spreading, so I could bake more on one sheet than I normally do.

Over all, an excellent choice by Natalia, she has posted the recipe here. Natlia - congratulations on the new job, it sounds so interesting.

Hah, almost forgot, you know I skipped the coconut, we don't need to keep beating that poor dead horse! I subbed about 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds for the missing coconut and added a few more nuts to as well. I used untoasted walnuts in these because I left them lying on the counter after baking last week and I was too darn lazy to get out the pecans! Of course, you already knew I was lazy the nuts were on the counter for a week!

I think carrots have been used in sweet cakes since the medieval period, during which time sweeteners were scarce and expensive, while carrots, which contain more sugar than any other vegetable besides the sugar beet, were much easier to come by and were used to make sweet desserts